This article examines the metaphysics and phenomenology of the self or subject of experience. It suggests that the phenomenological description of the minimal subject requires no reference to body, environment, or social relations and argues for a thin conception of subjectivity which equates the subject with the experience itself. Under this principle of minimal conception, the subject does not exist if the person is asleep. It contends that the profound metaphysical question about experience and experiential selves is whether experience is (...) limited to certain types of physical processes, or is characteristic of all physical processes, which would entail panpsychism. (shrink)

Intentionality is an essentially mental, essentially occurrent, and essentially experiential phenomenon. Any attempt to characterize intentionality that detaches it from conscious experience faces two insuperable problems. First, it is obliged to concede that almost everything has intentionality—all the way down to subatomic particles. Second, it has the consequence that everything that has intentionality has far too much of it—perhaps an infinite amount. The key to a satisfactory and truly naturalistic theory of intentionality is a realistic conception of naturalism and a (...) properly developed understanding of the phenomenon of cognitive experience. (shrink)

All developed human beings possess a practical mastery of a vast range of concepts, including such basic structural notions as those of identity, truth, existence, material objects, mental states, space, and time; but a practical mastery does not entail theoretical understanding. It is that understanding which philosophy seeks to achieve. In this book, one of the most distinguished of living philosophers, assuming no previous knowledge of the subject on the part of the reader, sets out to explain and illustrate a (...) certain conception of the nature of analytical philosophy. Strawson draws on his many years of teaching at Oxford University, during which he refined and developed what he regards as the most productive route to understanding the fundamental structure of human thinking. Among the distinctive features of his exposition are the displacement of an older, reductive conception of philosophical method in favor of elucidating the interconnections between the complex but irreducible notions which form the basic structure of our thinking; and the demonstration that the three traditionally distinguished departments of metaphysics, epistemology, and logic are but three aspects of one unified enquiry. Strawson has produced an elegant work that will be invaluable to students and stimulating for professional philosophers and general readers alike. (shrink)

According to standard compatibilist accounts of freedom, human beings act freely just so long as they are, when they act, free from constraints of certain specified kinds. Such accounts of freedom are examples of what one may call Constraint Compatibilism (CC). I will argue that, properly understood, CC entails not only that we are virtually always able to act freely, but also that virtually all if not all our actual actions are free. The suggestion is not so much that this (...) is a hitherto unnoticed consequence of CC, but, rather, that there is a certain way of conceiving of freedom implicit in CC that has not been taken sufficiently seriously. (shrink)

All experience is experiencing, and therefore entails an experiencer — i.e.a subject of experience. This is an a priori truth. It does not entail that, in the case of any given episode of experience, the portion of reality that is correctly said to be the experiencer (the subject of the experience) is something ontically distinct from the portion of reality that is the episode of experience itself, and there is one metaphysically fundamental way of conceiving of the subject of experience (...) — the thin conception — given which the subject of an experience is not ontically distinct from the experience. (shrink)

Reply to commentators on the paper 'Realistic monism: why physicalism entails panpsychism'.

There occurred in the twentieth century the most remarkable episode in the history of human thought. A number of thinkers denied the existence of something we know with certainty to exist: consciousness, conscious experience. Others held back from the Denial, as we may call it, but claimed that it might be true --a claim no less remarkable than the Denial. This paper documents some aspects of this episode, with particular reference to two things. First, the development of two views which (...) are forms of the Denial --philosophical behaviourism, and functionalism considered as a doctrine in the philosophy of mind-- from a view that does not in any way involve the Denial: psychological methodological behaviourism. Second, the rise of a way of understanding naturalism --materialist or physicalist naturalism-- that wrongly takes naturalism to entail the Denial. (shrink)

Intencionalnost je esencijalno mentalni, esencijalno zgodimični, te esencijalno iskustveni fenomen. Svaki pokušaj karakteriziranja intencionalnosti koji je izdvaja iz svjesnog iskustva suočuje se s dva nesavladiva problema. Prvo, obvezno je priznati da gotovo sve ima intencionalnost – sve do subatomskih čestica. Drugo, ima za posljedicu da sve što ima intencionalnost, ima je puno previše – možda beskonačno mnogo. Ključ zadovoljavajuće i istinski naturalističke teorije intencionalnosti jest realistička koncepcija naturalizma i ispravno razvijeno razumijevanje fenomena spoznajnog iskustva.Intentionality is an essentially mental, essentially occurrent, (...) and essentially experiential phenomenon. Any attempt to characterize intentionality that detaches it from conscious experiencefaces two insuperable problems. First, it is obliged to concede that almost everything has intentionality – all the way down to subatomic particles. Second, it has the consequencethat everything that has intentionality has far too much of it – perhaps an infinite amount. The keyto a satisfactory and truly naturalistic theory of intentionality is a realistic conception of naturalismand a properly developed understanding of the phenomenon of cognitive experience. (shrink)

[1] Experience is a real concrete phenomenon. The existence of experience entails the existence of a subject of experience. Therefore subjects of experience are concretely real. [2] The existence of a subject of experience in the lived present or living moment of experience, e.g. the period of time in which the grasping of a thought occurs, provably involves the existence of singleness or unity of an unsurpassably strong kind. The singleness or unity in question is a metaphysically real, concrete entity. (...) So if thoughts, or any experiences at all, really do occur or exist – and they do – then there exist entities that are genuine, concrete, metaphysical unities of an unsurpassable sort. [3] There is a metaphysically irreproachable sense in which we may – must – take these unsurpassable metaphysical unities to be themselves subjects of experience, although we may also take them to be thoughts or experiences. If so, there is a sound argument to the conclusion of the 2nd Paralogism. [4] Perhaps and are not in the final analysis distinct. Perhaps Kant is right, in his 1772 letter to Herz, that ‘the thinking or the existence of the thought and the existence of my own self are one and the same’. (shrink)

Galen Strawson (2006) thinks it is 'obviously' false that 'the terms of physics can fully capture the nature or essence of experience' (p. 4). He also describes this view as 'crazy' (p. 7). I think that he has been carried away by first impressions. It is certainly true that 'physicSalism', as he dubs this view, is strongly counterintuitive. But at the same time there are compelling arguments in its favour. I think that these arguments are sound and that the (...) contrary intuitions are misbegotten. In the first two sections of my remarks I would like to spend a little time defending physicSalism, or 'straightforward' physicalism, as I shall call it ('S' for 'straightforward', if you like). I realize that the main topic of Strawson's paper is panpsychism rather than his rejection of straightforward physicalism. But the latter is relevant as his arguments for panpsychism depend on his rejection of straightforward physicalism, in ways I shall explain below. (shrink)

Strawson offers three accounts of singular predication: a grammatical, a category and a mediating account. I argue that the grammatical and mediating accounts are refuted by a host of counter-examples and that the latter is worse than useless. In later works Strawson defends only the category account. This account entails that singular terms cannot be predicates; it excludes non-denoting singular terms from being logical subjects, except by means of an ad hoc analogy; it depends upon a notion of (...) identification that is too vague; and it is unnecessarily complicated, relying on analogies where a more uniform explanation should be possible. But I show how the account can be corrected to avoid all these difficulties and to provide an accurate account of singular predication. (shrink)

Strawson's primary claim is that 'physicalism entails panpsychism' (Strawson, 2006). This claim would be surprising if it meant what it seems to mean. But it does not.

I find myself in agreement with almost all of Galen's paper (Strawson, 2006) -- except, that is, for his three main claims. These I take to be: that he has provided a substantive and useful definition of 'physicalism'; that physicalism entails panpsychism; and that panpsychism is a necessary and viable doctrine. But I find much to applaud in the incidentals Galen brings in to defend these three claims, particularly his eloquent and uncompromising rejection of the idea of brute emergence, (...) as well as his dissatisfaction with standard forms of physicalism. I certainly find his paper far more on target than most of the stuff I read on this topic. (shrink)

Galen Strawson considers the self to be best described as a cognitive, `distinctively mental' phenomenon. He asserts that the mental sense of self comes to every normal human being in childhood and comprises the sense of being a mental presence, of being alone in one's head, with the body `just a vehicle or vessel for the mental thing that is what one really or most essentially is' . His thesis is determinedly cognitivist and it is with this that I (...) take issue. As Reed puts the problem, `cognitivism, with its allegiance to the representational theory of mind and its focus on mental states as internal to the mind, is particularly susceptible to the dualistic separation of self from the environment' . One may add that cognitivism is also susceptible to separating the self from the body. Reed suggests that perception not only provides information for the distinction between self and environment from the outset, but also it provides a means of keeping in contact with the world. Memory provides a means of bridging earlier and later aspects of self and integrating diverse elements of experience. Both perceiving and remembering entail aspects of self but in rather different ways. Perceiving is a spatio-temporal process which provides a continuous flow of information about the embodied self in its encounters with the physical and social world. Autobiographical memory requires a duplication of the self so that `me-experiencing-now' can be related with `a prior me-experiencing-a-prior-environment'. The question of interest is how a perceived self may, through development, give rise to a remembered self. (shrink)

In this paper we analyze the Strawson's notion of presupposition proposed in his book Introduction to Logical Theory. Strawsonian notion of presupposition is dependent on the notion of logical entailment. We make use of the theory of logical consequence operation as a general framework to show that it is impossible to find a logical consequence operation which mirrors the philosophical intuitions of the Strawson's notions of presupposition. The aim of this paper is to present in details the (...) philosophical backgrounds of the formal analysis presented in the author's paper "Strawsonian presuppositions and logical entailment". (shrink)

For the last five years philosopher Galen Strawson has provoked a mixture of shock and scepticism with his carefully argued case that physicalism entails panpsychism. In this book Strawson provides the fullest and most careful statement of his position to date, throwing down the gauntlet to his critics — including Peter Carruthers, Frank Jackson, David Rosenthal and J.J.C. Smart — by inviting them to respond in print. The book concludes with Strawson's response to his commentators. Galen (...) class='Hi'>Strawson’s books include Mental Reality, The Self? and Freedom and Belief. (shrink)

In this paper I first examine two important assumptions underlying the argument that physicalism entails panpsychism. These need unearthing because opponents in the literature distinguish themselves from Strawson in the main by rejecting one or the other. Once they have been stated, and something has been said about the positions that reject them, the onus of argument becomes clear: the assumptions require careful defence. I believe they are true, in fact, but their defence is a large project that cannot (...) begin here. So, in the final section I comment on what follows if they are granted. I agree with Strawson that --broadly -- 'panpsychism' is the direction in which philosophy of mind should be heading; nevertheless, there are certain difficulties in the detail of his position. In light of these I argue for changes to the doctrine, bringing it into line with the slightly. (shrink)

This collection of papers, Consciousness and its Place in Nature: Does Physicalism Entail Panpsychism?, edited by Anthony Freeman presents seventeen responses to Galen Strawson’s keynote paper which claims that the only plausible way to be a real physicalist is to accept that the intrinsic properties of the physical are experiential in character, i.e., the doctrine of panpsychism. The book concludes with Strawson’s reply to these responses. This “real physicalism” is, according to Strawson, the only way of dealing (...) with what Chalmers calls the “hard problem of consciousness.” This problem lies in the fact that the experiential nature of our conscious experience is a puzzling phenomenon for the materialist. It is of an apparently fundamentally different nature from the rest of the physical world, hence the problem of integrating it into a satisfactory naturalistic world-picture. (shrink)

The existence of “local implicatures” has been the topic of much recent debate. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to this debate by asking what we can learn from three puzzles, namely, the cancellation of such implicatures by or both, their behavior in the complement clauses of negative factive verbs such as sorry, and their behavior in root and embedded questions. Two basic approaches to local implicatures have been advanced: a fully pragmatic account in which local implicatures result (...) from conventional Gricean principles and a semantic account according to which the generation of implicatures is interwoven with compositional, grammatical mechanisms. We argue that the lesson to be learned from our three case studies is that some kind of approach along the latter, grammatical line is necessary to account for the data. (shrink)

Galen Strawson accepts that the common experience of being a social self is of something that continues through time. However, he excludes this from what ‘the self’ means in a stricter ontological sense. Here I will argue that this experience of self as enduring can be taken to be ontologically real as well. I will suggest that selfhood arises from the assimilation of cultural signs by a semiotic process that is a fundamental aspect of nature. I will also consider (...) how the phenomenological encounter with ‘the self’ is conditioned by prior beliefs and their ethical entailments. (shrink)

Intuitively, moral responsibility requires conscious awareness of what one is doing, and why one is doing it, but what kind of awareness is at issue? Neil Levy argues that phenomenal consciousness—the qualitative feel of conscious sensations—is entirely unnecessary for moral responsibility. He claims that only access consciousness—the state in which information (e.g., from perception or memory) is available to an array of mental systems (e.g., such that an agent can deliberate and act upon that information)—is relevant to moral responsibility. I (...) argue that numerous ethical, epistemic, and neuroscientific considerations entail that the capacity for phenomenal consciousness is necessary for moral responsibility. I focus in particular on considerations inspired by P. F. Strawson, who puts a range of qualitative moral emotions—the reactive attitudes—front and center in the analysis of moral responsibility. (shrink)

Professor Strawson's paper is refreshing in content as well as refreshingly intemperate. It is salutary to be reminded that even the Type Identity Theory does not entail physicalism as that doctrine is usually understood (since c-fiber firings are not by definition purely physical). And it's fun to consider versions of panpsychism. I can see why Strawson finds his position hard to classify (p. 7), and I sympathize. In my title I have cast my own vote for '?-ism' on (...) the grounds that any familiar label would be either misleading or unwieldy. My main purpose here is to assess Strawson's case for panpsychism and then to offer some objections to panpsychism, but first I want to answer an interesting and serious charge he makes against me. (shrink)

Commentary on Galen Strawson's 'Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism'.

Over the course of the past few decades 4E approaches that theorize cognition and agency as embodied, embedded, extended, and/or enactive have garnered growing support from figures working in philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Correspondingly, there has been a rising interest in the wider conceptual and practical implications of 4E views. Several proposals have for instance been made regarding 4E’s bearing on ethical theory, 505–526, 2009; Cash, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 9, 645–671 2010). In this paper I contribute (...) to this trend by critically examining the enactive contribution made by Colombetti and Torrance, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 8, 505–526 and by laying the foundations for an alternative enactive approach. Building off recent enactive approaches to social interaction, Colombetti and Torrance, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 8, maintain that many of our actions and intentions “and in particular the ethical significance of what we do and mean” are “emergent from the interactions in which we participate”. Taking this seriously, they argue, entails a radical shift away from moral theory’s traditional emphasis on individual or personal responsibility. I challenge their suggestion that accepting a broadly enactive 4E approach to cognition and agency entails the kind of wholesale shift they propose. To make my case I start by revisiting some of the general theoretical commitments characteristic of enactivism, including some relevant insights that can be gathered from Vasudevi Reddy’s broadly enactive approach to developmental psychology. After that I examine both the arguments internal to Colombetti and Torrance’s proposal and, in an effort to sketch the beginnings of an alternative view, I draw some connections between enactivism, the ethics of care and P.F. Strawson’s work on personal responsibility. I believe that a consideration of the commonalities but also the differences between these views helps advance the important conversation concerning the link between enactivism and questions of personal responsibility in ethical theory that Colombetti and Torrance have undeniably helped jumpstart. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume 29, Number 1, April 2003, pp. 43-61 Conceivability and Modality in Hume: A Lemma in an Argument in Defense of Skeptical Realism PETER KAIL Introduction: A Realist View of Necessity and the Key Objection Those who seek to defend a skeptical realist reading of Hume on causal necessity have a number of textual and philosophical hurdles to clear. This paper attempts to clear one and only (...) one hurdle. So one should not look here for a complete case in favor of a skeptical realist reading: I merely attempt to dispose of what looks like a decisive objection to a conception of objective necessary connection which, I believe, Hume endorses. The skeptical realist Hume, as I and others read him, is a Hume who wishes to deny that human beings have the cognitive wherewithal to perceive or grasp the necessary connection which relates the objects of genuine causal relations. His "skeptical conclusion" is that we cannot grasp in re necessity, nor that there is no necessity. That bald statement, of course, leaves us with a whole host of questions: why should we think that Hume believes that there really is causal necessity? Is this position compatible with his positive account of our idea of necessary connection, or his theory of belief (and of ideas in general)? What of Hume's talk of "necessity in the objects" lacking a meaning? And how does Peter Kail is Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy, The University of Edinburgh, David Hume Tower, George Square, Edinburgh ΕΗ8 9JX, United Kingdom, e-mail: [email protected] 44 Peter Kail such a skeptical realist reading mesh with Hume's general philosophical project (or, indeed, what does it tell us about that)? None of these questions can be addressed here.1 Instead, as I said, I want to defend a conception of necessary connection that seems vulnerable to a decisive objection. First, then, I need to spell out what that conception is. Hume takes acquaintance with necessary connection (the "power, force or efficacy") to entail certain conceptual-cum-epistemological consequences. Roughly, acquaintance with necessary connection would entail (a) the possibility of a priori knowledge of the relevant cause's effect and (b) the impossibility of conceiving the cause without its effect. He tells us that: From the first appearance of an object, we can never conjecture what effect will result from it. But were the power or energy of any cause discoverable by the mind, we could foresee the effect, even without experience; and might, at first, pronounce with certainty concerning it, by the mere dint of thought and reasoning. (EHU 7.1.7; SBN 63) A similar claim is made in the Treatise: We must distinctly and particularly conceive the connection betwixt cause and effect, and be able to pronounce, from a simple view of the one, that it must be follow'd or preceded by the other. This is the true manner of conceiving a particular power in a particular body. (T 1.3.14.13; SBN 161) These aspects of Hume's treatment of necessity constitute what Galen Strawson has called the "AP Property."2 Notice that the AP Property furnishes a thin, but nevertheless contentful, specification of that of which we are ignorant when Hume says we are ignorant of necessary connection. Necessary connection is that feature, acquaintance with which, would yield what is specified in the AP Property. One can go further by suggesting that what the AP Property picks out are unknown (and, for reasons of deep contingency, unknowable) essences.3 This thought is intimated by a number of things Hume says: 'Tis easy to observe, that in tracing this relation, the inference we draw from cause to effect, is not deriv'd merely from a survey of these particular objects, and from such a penetration into their essences as may discover the dependence of the one upon the other. (T 1.3.6.1; SBN 86 (my emphasis)) Hume Studies Conceivability and Modality 45 And: It has been observ'd already, that in no single instance the ultimate connexion of any objects is discoverable, either by our senses or reason, and that we can never penetrate... (shrink)

According to some philosophers, if moral agency is understood in behaviourist terms, robots could become moral agents that are as good as or even better than humans. Given the behaviourist conception, it is natural to think that there is no interesting moral difference between robots and humans in terms of moral agency (call it the _equivalence thesis_). However, such moral differences exist: based on Strawson’s account of participant reactive attitude and Scanlon’s relational account of blame, I argue that a (...) distinct kind of reason available to humans—call it _human-relative reason_—is not available to robots. The difference in moral reason entails that sometimes an action is morally permissible for humans, but not for robots. Therefore, when developing moral robots, we cannot consider only what humans can or cannot do. I use examples of paternalism to illustrate my argument. (shrink)

The acceptability of _any_-DPs in existential modal sentences presents a challenge for theories of NPI licensing: existential modal sentences appear to differ substantially from other environments in which _any_-DPs are acceptable (in particular, they lack a downward-entailing operator). One approach to this challenge has been to, first, take _any_-DPs to be subject to an environment-based downward-entailingness condition—they have to occur in an environment that is Strawson downward-entailing with respect to their domain (cf. Kadmon and Landman 1993 )—and, second, to (...) derive such an environment in existential modal sentences by means of exhaustification (e.g., Fox 2007 ). This note presents new evidence for such a two-layered approach (cf. Crnič 2017, 2019 ). The evidence comes from a striking contrast in the behavior of singular vs. plural _any_-DPs in existential modal sentences. The paper concludes by charting some relations between _any_-DPs and other polarity items. (shrink)

In this book, Bruce Waller attacks two prevalent philosophical beliefs. First, he argues that moral responsibility must be rejected; there is no room for such a notion within our naturalist framework. Second, he denies the common assumption that moral responsibility is inseparably linked with individual freedom. Rejection of moral responsibility does not entail the demise of individual freedom; instead, individual freedom is enhanced by the rejection of moral responsibility. According to this theory of "no-fault naturalism," no one deserves either blame (...) or reward.In the course of arguing against moral responsibility, Waller critiques major compatibilist arguments-by Dennett, Frankfurt, Strawson, Bennett, Wolf, Hampshire, Glover, Rachels, Sher, and others. In addition, the implications of denying moral responsibility-for individual freedom, for moral judgments and moral behavior, and for social justice-are examined; the supposed dire consequences of the denial of moral responsibility are challenged; and the benefits of denying moral responsibility are described. Author note: Bruce N. Waller, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Youngstown State University, Youngstown, Ohio, is the author of Critical Thinking: Consider the Verdict. (shrink)

Understanding, for Kant, does not intuit, and intuition—which involves empirical information, i.e., sense-data—does not entail thinking. What is crucial to Kant’s famous claim that intuitions without concepts are blind and concepts without intuitions are empty is the idea that we have no knowledge unless we combine concepts with intuition. Although concepts and intuition are radically separated mental powers, without a way of bringing them together (i.e., synthesis) there is no knowledge for Kant. Thus Kant’s metaphysical-scientific dualism: (scientific) knowledge is limited (...) to the world of phenomena—the world of appearance—while the thing-in-itself is unknowable because there is no intuition that can correspond to the it. This paper sets to cull Béatrice Longuenesse’s recent work on the first-person ‘I’ and put forth a novel Kantian approach to the first-person reference of mental states, working in the tradition of P.F. Strawson, Rudolf Carnap, and Wilfrid Sellars, while offering an empirical study of deafferentation to ground the thesis that the binding of representations is separate from phenomenal consciousness. Accordingly, we stake a kind of self-consciousness vis-à-vis the Fundamental Reference-Rule qua apperception that, while intimately connected to consciousness of one’s own body, apperception is nevertheless distinct from it and is, moreover, the condition for any use of ‘I’. We compliment neuroscientist Oliver Sacks’ research with Ned Block’s recent work on “no-post‐perceptual cognition” and attentional variation to couch Kant’s schema in perceptual psychology. We navigate Kant’s work on intuitions (viz. sensation, perception, and the empirical side of the cognitive faculties) and indirect realism/weak representationism first via Sellars’ naturalization of Kant’s inaccessible thing-in-itself, before challenging Sellars’ functionalist and inferentialist conception of perception and discursive intentionality. We ultimately endeavor to conceptualize the limit-conditions regarding our having reportable knowledge about our access to percepts and concepts. (shrink)

In order to explain that sentences containing empty definite descriptions are nevertheless true or false, Russell famously analyzes sentences of the form ‘The F is G’ as ‘There is exactly one F and it is G’. Against this it has been objected that Russell’s analysis provides the wrong truth-conditions when it comes to non-doxastic attitude ascriptions. For example, according to Heim, Kripke, and Elbourne (HKE), there are circumstances in which (1) is true and (2) is false. Hans wants the ghost (...) in his attic to be quiet tonight.Hans wants there to be exactly one ghost in his attic and for it to be quiet tonight. After all, the argument goes, unlike (2), (1) can be true without Hans wanting there to be exactly one ghost in his attic. Kaplan and Neale famously reply that the HKE objection presupposes that non-doxastic attitudes are closed under entailment, which they are not. For Rostworowski, on the other hand, the problematic principle used by the HKE objection is a substitutivity principle for non-doxastic attitude ascriptions. This is further supported by the fact that, as Elbourne points out, Russell’s analysis already leads to a problem similar to the HKE objection together with substitutivity alone. By questioning substitutivity for non-doxastic attitude ascriptions, Rostworowski tries to block both the HKE objection and Elbourne’s variant of the HKE objection. In this paper, I will argue that Russell’s analysis of definite descriptions leads to a variant of the HKE objection even in the context of doxastic attitude ascriptions. Since, as we will see, doxastic attitude ascriptions do not seem to suffer from the substitutivity problems discussed by Rostworowski in the context of non-doxastic attitude ascriptions, this will further exacerbate the problem for Russell’s analysis. I will then discuss the possibility to reject substitutivity for doxastic attitude ascriptions using a contextualist analysis of attitude ascriptions. However, we will see that, independent of whether we accept substitutivity for doxastic attitude ascriptions, a complete solution of the doxastic problem has to reject Russell’s analysis of the truth-conditions of sentences of the form ‘The F is G’. Concluding, I will show that, unlike Russell’s analysis, the Frege–Strawson analysis of definite descriptions, according to which a sentence of the form ‘The F is G’ presupposes that there is exactly one F, rather than asserting it, provides an explanation of the HKE objection, Elbourne’s variant of the HKE objection, and the doxastic problem presented in this paper. This will speak not only in favor of a Fregean analysis of definite descriptions, but also of a Fregean conception of propositions. (shrink)

The representation of Neg-Raising in the grammar is a matter of controversy. I provide evidence for representing Neg-Raising as a kind of presupposition associated with certain predicates by providing a detailed analysis of NPI-licensing in Neg-Raising contexts. Specific features of presupposition projection are used to explain the licensing of strict NPIs under Neg-Raising predicates. Discussion centers around the analysis of a licensing asymmetry noted in Horn (1971, Negative transportation: Unsafe at any speed? In CLS 7 (pp. 120–133)).Having provided this analysis, (...) I go on to discuss its implications for the theory of NPI-licensing more generally. In particular, I discuss how the present proposal reflects on von Fintel’s (1999, Journal of Semantics, 16, 97–148) proposal to use Strawson downward entailment in the statement of NPI-licensing principles. (shrink)

Recently, there has been much discussion of two challenging arguments that suggest that if we were to lack free will of the sort required for moral responsibility we would lose one of the most important things that give our lives meaning, namely, valuable human relationships such as friendship. One line of argument, defended by Robert Kane, suggests that freely chosen relationships have an irreplaceable value, and the other, defended by Peter Strawson and recently taken up in a new form (...) by Seth Shabo and others, suggests that the most valuable relationships are ones that require susceptibility to the emotions of resentment and indignation that presuppose freedom and responsibility. These arguments have been ably challenged (see, for example, Pereboom 2014). But even if these arguments are unsound, their conclusion might still be true. In this paper, I aim to defend a distinctive third kind of approach. It appeals to the nature of friendship as requiring a special kind of obligations, and in this way draws a closer connection between the aspects of friendship that require free will and moral responsibility itself. The reasoning rests on two main premises. The first is that genuine friendship entails special obligations. Two people are not friends unless they have obligations toward one another that are partially defining of friendship. The second premise is that one has obligations only if one has the freedom to meet them. This idea is closely related to a principle taken to be axiomatic in various ethical and even deontic logical systems: Ought Implies Can. Putting these premises together, we can conclude that friendship (as well as other special relationships) require freedom. Defending these two premises takes us into two entirely separate debates, one in ethical theory and one in free will and responsibility, and a secondary aim of the paper is to bring these two vibrant discussions together. (shrink)